I don't know how you cook your steaks, but if you can't grill one right without a torch, you need to take a look at your equipment.
Okay, I can see I started a controversy, and now I have to point out that I can cook. I should have known this would start up. I can REALLY cook. I have very little interest in cooking now, so it's sort of ironic, but I have plenty of ability.
When I make an effort, my steaks are far better than those from Ruth's Chris, Morton's, the Capital Grille, Peter Luger, Smith & Wollensky or any other high-end restaurant I've visited, so it's not like I can't prepare a steak. A pinhead can prepare a good steak; it's easier than boiling eggs. It's so simple, it's nothing to be proud of. You just apply heat to beef. If I go to a high-end steakhouse, it's because I'm dining with other people. The food, including sides, is invariably far inferior to what I can prepare at home.
1. My current equipment IS a problem. Propane grills sold commercially are weak, and that includes the $2200 "professional" (a mythological term) built-in I used to have. A steak that isn't somewhat charred and hot on the outside is cooked improperly, and I had to modify my current grill ($115 from Amazon) in order to get a decent result. I bought a big regulator from a turkey fryer and turned the gas way up, and I had to adjust the air shutters to cope with the gas flow. It's still not as hot as it should be, but it's hard to complain about a total investment of $150 or less. When the grill craps out, I can either buy parts and repair it cheap, or I can put it in the trash and get a new one.
Before someone mentions wood and charcoal, I know I could do better with either, but I'm not going to work that hard or turn my farm into an ash-dumping ground. My days of cooking as a laborious hobby are done. I am not a foodie. They are annoying and pretentious. They ruin meals with their attitude. I just want to get it over with and get the food on the table. I quit aging my own beef, and I rarely buy prime now. I just want to be able to prepare an A- meal in less than twenty minutes without a hideous mess. It's propane or nothing, unless my next house miraculously comes with an electric salamander. It's absolutely fine with me if someone else somewhere is cooking slightly better steaks.
I'm never buying an expensive gas grill again. No matter what you spend, they don't last, it's hard or impossible to get people to work on them, and the performance is generally bad except for things that don't require searing. I just got a $115 portable that, as modified, works somewhat better than the $2200 grill I used to have. People tell me Australian grills are better. I don't care. I'm all done spending big money on grills. That's for foodies and hipsters.
As for torches and other external means of compensating for weak grills, they work very well, and knowledgeable cooking experts recommend them. I have a Searzall arriving today, and I'm looking forward to seeing how well it works. Even without a Searzall, my torch works great, and it's very quick and convenient. Even with flames leaping up through the rack, my grill is not hot enough to produce properly charred burgers with pink insides without help.
2. Right now, I am not set up for it, but my default cooking method used to be a cast iron griddle on a turkey fryer base. My results differ from yours. If I cooked a steak for the short time you recommend, it would be very rare. I use a meat thermometer to judge the cooking time, and a 1.5" rib eye takes a good 15 minutes to reach medium-rare. I quit when the temperature is 120. At that point it has a wonderful dark crust without black areas.
Filets are not my thing. Women love them, because they judge steaks purely by how easy they are to cut. They're my second choice because they're relatively lean and flavorless.
I quit cooking steaks in the house because traditional kitchens are designed for women who reheat frozen food and occasionally scramble an egg, and they aren't made to handle greasy smoke or spatters. My kitchen is full of fancy painted surfaces where grease will accumulate, and the vent hood, while large by most people's standards, is completely inadequate. The ceiling is 10.5 feet high, and I don't plan to get on a ladder and clean or paint it. From now on, it's the grill or the griddle.
I just bought a $20 butane stove, and I'm planning to get a griddle to fit it. It will work as well as the old turkey fryer, and it's very small and easy to clean and store.
I just asked the forge question out of curiosity. I don't have a forge, and I can prepare steaks as well as I want to.
